Summary
Chinese solar companies, which control over 80% of the global solar market, have long avoided U.S. duties by shifting production to Southeast Asia.
Over 80% of U.S. solar imports now come from nations like Malaysia and Vietnam, but new U.S. tariffs are expanding to these regions.
In response, Chinese firms are exploring manufacturing in the Middle East.
Analysts say such measures expose the challenges of reducing U.S. reliance on China’s solar supply chain.
So China is able to turn the tariffs around to impact US businesses more than Chinese.
China will relocate consumer-ready production to other nations to avoid the price hike of the tariffs. The Chinese-manufactured textiles, plastics, and components used in domestic products will still be impacted by the tariffs, resulting in increased cost of domestically produced products using Chinese materials.
I work in ecomm and our factory had been exploring Mexico but settled on Vietnam, they’re in the process of moving key people over there now. I imagine most others are doing similar, tariffs were bad enough as is.